So, a lovely mountain pass in the Swiss Alps. And a scene from memory of . . . Licking County?

Ellen Hayes, in her 1920 book "Wild Turkeys and Tallow Candles," said of her growing-up years just before the Civil War that, as a much older woman, a professor at Wellesley College, she had been on the Grand Tour of Europe.

It was in passing through the Furka Pass, seen above (click to enlarge), that she was struck with how much the scene around her felt the same as how she, as a child, viewed passing through "the Dugway" alongside Raccoon Creek, bending around the hill now sliced off by Rt. 16 heading east into Newark. The sense of scale and wonder to young eyes, and the expectation of adventure beyond the bend around the river, a steep slope on your left hand, made her feel a sudden direct link between that experience long before and her travel in that moment.

And now i think of that connection almost every time i zip around that bend at 55 mph, the "vale of Newark" opening up before me. Can you see it? Or more to the point, can you feel it?